Rich snippets are becoming extremely important in the SERPS these days, some might even argue they are more important than rankings. Because they make you stand out. Whether it’s video, reviews or just the text you want highlighted, everything you can do, you should do.

When it comes to event calendars Google has just made the life of a webmaster a whole lot easier by introducing Data Highlighter for event data which will allow even the most a technical webmasters to mark up structured data about events (think concerts, conferences or festivals). Without touching html.

Data Highlighter is a point-and-click tool within Google Webmaster Tools and is now available in English. With it you can highlight a piece of content on your page and ‘tag’ the data for Google. See below how I quickly added data about search conferences on State of Search:

The first step you take is going to webmastertools and choosing the Data Highlighter in the sidebar, which you can find below the “Optimization” link.

You then choose the page you want to mark up. You can do that for single pages, but if your site has the same structure all over, the tool will work.

The next step is easy: start highlighting. A menu will show which you can use to pinpoint the specific data which is shown in the right pane in a ‘structured’ way.

When you’re done, you can review a sample of all the event data that Data Highlighter now understands. If it’s correct, click “Publish.” And off you go.

Here is how Google explains it in their Webmastertools video:

It is a very nifty tool which I am sure will help a lot of webmasters.